Field of Art
The present disclosure relates to a technology for holding an object.
Description of the Related Art
Robot picking systems have hitherto been used in which a part is automatically picked up using a robot from a state in which parts are loaded in bulk. In such a robot picking system, an image of a state in which multiple parts, which are target objects, are arranged at random in a pallet is captured with x camera provided above the pallet or the state is measured with a three-dimensional measurement apparatus. The position and orientation of a part to be held is determined from the result of the image capturing as the result of the measurement and the part may be held with a robot hand.
In the above case, parts that are located at high positions in the pallet are normally preferentially selected as holding candidates and a part is held with the robot hand in order to cause the robot hand to operate without colliding with other objects as much as possible. In addition, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-135820 discloses a method of reliably holding a part that is located at the highest position by shifting the part, instead of holding the part, when the part is higher than other parts by an amount exceeding a predetermined threshold value.
However, the technologies in related art have the following issue. It is premised that the direction of a high position is a picking system coincides with the direction opposite to the direction of gravity. A camera or a measurement apparatus is arranged on the basis of this premise and information processing, such as determination of the holding order to determine which object is preferentially held, is performed. In such a situation, there are cases in which the direction on which the determination of the holding order is based does not necessarily coincide with the direction opposite to the direction of gravity and the picking systems in the related art are not capable of addressing such cases.